Best to you John...

John, sincere condolences and hoping for a better 2022.

Seahawk, that was a great email he speaks highly of you

Me, it’s work work work. The housing boom for us is still going on, to the point in our area, we’ve had to stop selling homes, to build the sold homes have on the books. The past year has been a struggle with labor and supply chain issues. I don’t see it getting any better anytime soon, but hoping for the best.

Personally, I need to start watching what I eat, exercising and lose weight.

Loving retirement (full retirement 8 months in) .....

Whipping my ass into shape -- healthy, family ok --the rest is noise

Damn. Wise perspective.

2022 is starting out not much different than 2021, for us. Work is still "normal" for the wife and I, which I know we are very fortunate for. Kids are doing well and nothing crazy is happening in our personal lives. It IS zooming by, though. Just like last year did. The older I get (I'm still "young," dammit!), the shorter each year seems.

"The longer you stay home, the more homeless you look" - Internet

2022 - it's gonna be interesting. You heard it here first.

If only

John - I'm sorry to hear of your troubles and I hope you can find some peace and consolation this year.

Changed jobs
Turns out new job was totally mispresented and is worse then old job.

So 2020 not a great start

2022: The wife's broken hip is healing well. She saw the surgeon a couple of weeks ago and she has been getting out of the house( with a couple of hiking poles) to work with her beloved equines.
With the series of snow storms which came our way,, we at last had the opportunity to give a good workout to the generator we bought two years ago. Over three outages it ran like a top for about three days.
The MIL is hanging in there in her own home, so she is happy.
I spoke with my brother two days ago. That is special because ten days before that he couldn't breathe without a machine. He is out of the hospital and looking forward to his 89th birthday in April.
Things are going well here.

Best
Les

I’m holding my opinion about 2022. We’re not even 20% into it so...

So far 2022 has been a carbon copy of 2021 for me.

I meet some competitors for beers once every couple of months. We tell stories and unwind, it is good therapy since we are all in the same boat, sort of. 1 guy works for an international corp, the other guy works for a larger company in town, myself and a good friend of mine both own mom and pop small companies. Care to venture a guess who makes the most money out of the 4 of us? The mom and pop guys. The 2 corporate guys make about 30% of what my buddy and I pull down a year. When times are good. when times are bad we probably make the same money.

Guy #2 texts me yesterday. His company, the larger one (not the international one) wants to buy my company and hire me on to run their residential division. I do not know the details yet, I am meeting him next week to discuss this in detail. He has my attention.

I lot of soul searching last night. Running this through my head. I spent 25 years building this company up, I tried all kinds of formats and to be honest, I have it perfected now. I crank out insane profits with minimal staff.

With that comes 70+ hour work weeks, many times over 80 hours. I can fix that, sort of, hire on some help. Except, I cannot see this business being busy through the end of this year, I suspect the hammer is about to drop.

Therefore if I decide to not take this offer (highly likely I will decline it) I will grind out this year and take all I can while I can.

I am mostly flattered I would be considered for such a position as such a large company. I have to admit, being self employed for 25 years, I am not sure I can go back to working for the man, the weighs heavy on me.

Then I think I have not had a full week vacation since 2017. So much to consider it makes my head spin.

I am sorry to hear about your wife John and all the other deaths. Thinking about your troubles and hope things get better...

I edited for brevity.

We have been approached three times by "Bigs" in our industry. The first time it was worth going through the process even though we had no intent, at that time, to sell any portion of the company. The last two we politely declined.

I would take at least one meeting to hear what your friends Boss/Bosses have to say. You don't need someone skilled in these areas for that.

After running my own business for over ten years, there is no way I could go work for a large deference contractor...they are slow to react, not creative and management is usually made up of Puppy Stranglers.

In a weird twist, we severed a relationshiip/teaming agreement with a very large defense contractor: They were on their fourth re-org in five years and it was an absurd waste of our time.

Any way, best of luck.

Life is good.

There are options to that. Think about the ways you can make this better for you rather than worse, as you currently see it.

Were it me, I wouldn’t even think about selling until there’s an offer on the table, Jim.

If said offer is in the ball park, say good by to 70-80hr weeks. That right there is approaching 50% increase in quality of life right off the top, which is worth waaaay more than any money.

Also, working for the man isn’t probably as bad as it seems to a self-made entrepreneur. No more worries about losing your entire shebang. If the company goes tits up you’re only out of a job, not an entire life. The stress level approaches zero, too.

If the offer is good and you take it, I’m assuming that’s money in the bank, meaning if you hate working for somebody else, you can survive until you start something new, depending on your age.

You are in charge of your life either way, so that stays the same.

We’ve been trying to buy our retirement home and move off the lake. Beyond frustrating. Find a home that checks the boxes, offer $20k above asking price and get out bid by 5 others. Hoping we will make it up on this end when we sell, but still very frustrating. So far it’s the year of expensive everything.

Planning to retire at year end depending on how the gig is going.

Here’s a pic from our deck the other morning. Every so often the sun, clouds and water conspire to make magic.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1644709413.jpg

Apparently it is the year of Pelican Forums technical snafus. ;)

Crap year, 01 crap year. 80's were much better. Inflation, radicals everwhere. Eliet piggies laughing. Build back broke. Sucks for real Mericans. Lets go Brandon!